Plan to Remake Tysons Corner Envisions Dense Urban Center

Property owners, developers and an architecture firm have come together to pitch their visions for the redevelopment of Tysons Corner.Audio: Amy Gardner/The Washington Post3D Animation and photos: Davis, Carter, Scott Ltd.

The transformation of Tysons Corner from a car-dominated tangle of offices, malls and auto dealers into a livable city will start moving ahead in the coming weeks.

Fairfax County leaders and landowners are unveiling sweeping proposals to build densely packed high-rises, miles of new streets, and enough parks, schools, police stations and firehouses to serve an entirely new place.

The results could determine the future not only of Virginia's mightiest jobs hub, but also what happens across the country. Urban-renewal leaders are looking to Tysons as a model.

The plans come at a make-or-break time. Landowners and developers are ready to invest, but they say that if they are not given latitude to build more densely, they will redevelop under existing rules -- promising more of the same auto-dependent, suburban sprawl.

Rebuilding Tysons is a huge undertaking of unknown cost and other uncertainties, including whether Metrorail will ever be built through Tysons to Dulles International Airport. It is also a potentially explosive proposition that will bring out powerful civic groups opposed to too much development. It is at the mercy of the area's physical impediments, which include four major highways and paralyzing traffic. And it is dependent upon the willingness of landowners and taxpayers to bear the cost of building a city from the ground up.

"I'm calling this the audacity of change," Clark Tyler, chairman of a county-appointed study panel, told a group of business leaders recently. "This is our last chance to get it right."

Getting it right has been a 3 1/2 -year undertaking for the Tysons Land Use Task Force, an unwieldy collection of neighborhood representatives, business leaders and developers that is preparing to release a 200-page recommendation on how to remake Tysons. Appointed in 2004 by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, the task force has studied every aspect of redeveloping Tysons Corner: parking management, traffic patterns, a "circulator" bus line, affordable housing, sewers, storm water.

The task is daunting. It's not easy to imagine a future city while idling at one of the interminable left-turn signals, or spilling off the eight-lane Capital Beltway, or sliding behind the wheel for a lunch date two blocks away because walking is out of the question. Tysons is Fairfax's de facto downtown, but it is a place with more parking (40 million square feet) than offices (28 million square feet); more workers who drive in (120,000) than residents who sleep in (17,000); highways that divide (Route 7, Route 123, the Dulles Toll Road, the Capital Beltway); and too few ways in and out.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Tysons is cost. To pay for new infrastructure, the task force is looking at special taxing districts or a development authority with borrowing power. But the real arrow in the quiver, as Tyler likes to say, is density. Allowing developers to build 10-, 20- or even 30-story buildings, one next to the other and without such conventional suburban requirements as parking and distance from the next property, is the key to exacting money from them to rebuild Tysons.

The task force is rushing to finish its work for several reasons. Plans for a Metrorail extension are moving forward again after months of delays, promising four stations through the heart of Tysons. Demand for Earth-friendly urban development is growing with concerns about global warming. Landowners and developers are ready to invest.

Powerful constituencies are lined up against them. Tysons covers fewer than 2,000 acres and is surrounded by well-established residential neighborhoods. These communities, primarily with McLean, Vienna and Falls Church addresses, are anxious about the impact of a major development boom in Tysons. Organized groups such as Fairfax Citizens for Responsible Growth, the Greater Tysons Citizens Coalition and the McLean Citizens Association have criticized the task force for not demonstrating what the impact of development would be on traffic, schools and parks.

"We have supported an urbanization of Tysons, but there have to be sufficient public facilities there, one, to make it an attractive urban community, and two, to protect the surrounding neighborhoods," said Rob Jackson, president of the McLean Citizens Association.